Roar...Ethan is Four!

My baby turned four this month and we celebrated by having our family over for a dinosaur themed birthday bash. It was a dinoriffic time!

 I decorated the house in green and orange and, of course, dinosaurs.



My friends at Sign Solutions created this awesome banner, which is now hanging in Ethan's bedroom as a permanent decoration.

I made the dinosaur birthday cake and am really proud of how this stegosaurus cake turned out. It was my first attempt at doing a carved 3-D cake and it was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. Plus it was really fun to try and figure out what candies that we have at our small town grocery store would work for the dinosaur details. (I'll try and do a post later on dedicated to the details on how I made this cake.)

All smiles as we sing "Happy Birthday"!

Ethan with his cousins, Alex & Hunter, enjoying the birthday cake. Ethan got the dinosaur head for his piece of cake.

The adult table. (For the birthday dinner we served some of Ethan's favorites: Pork tenderloin, twice baked potatoes, broccoli & cheese, gnocchi and crescent rolls.)

Pictures of some of the birthday presents.



Happy Birthday to my sweet, baby boy who constantly reminds me that he is no longer a baby now that he is four. And he's right, he's such a big boy now and amazes me at all the things he can do. Becoming a Mom four years ago was the best thing that has ever happened to me and I'm forever thankful to God for bestowing this great blessing upon me.

Words to Live By

It's been one of those days...actually, it's been of those weeks. I saw this image on another blog and it struck a cord.  Too often, fear plays a bigger role in my life course than I would ever want to admit. I over analyze, worry about what other people think and fear the unknown more often than embracing the change.

If you don't like something, change it. It sounds like such a simple concept but how often are we frozen in place by fear of the possibilities and the unknown that we just stay in the exact same place afraid to move forward?

Blake Shelton Concert

Jim and I waiting for the Blake Shelton concert to begin.

A couple of weeks ago, I entered a contest on Facebook and won two tickets to the Blake Shelton concert at the Kansas State Fair. The package also included a Visa gift card and some restaurant gift certificates. Unfortunately, we don't have any of the restaurant chains anywhere even remotely close to where we live, so I'll have to remember to use them if I ever make it out to the big city. No matter, though, it's always fun to win free stuff!

We headed down to Hutchison to spend some time walking around the fair grounds before taking in the concert. We checked out the exhibit halls to see all the vendors giving demos and then bought the mandatory fried fair food for dinner - yummy!

Pretty soon, it was time to head to the grand stands.

Here's our view of the stage from our vantage point. Our seats were a little further back than I had envisioned. I can't remember who this opening act was, but he had really good musicians in his band.

This was my view of the jumbo screen - a large pole. This was kind of annoying.

After the opening act, which was an hour, there was a 30 minute break while they set up the stage for Blake Shelton. I was rather disappointed in the time delay. You get pumped up by the opening act and then just sit around waiting for the headliner to start their performance.

Finally it was time for Blake Shelton to take the stage.

We wouldn't have gone to this concert if I hadn't won the tickets, but we had a really good time. Blake Shelton was very funny and his stories and songs were relatable - lots of songs on beer drinking, hard work, hunting and the occasional love song mixed in.

We still had to drive back that night and I had to play the piano for church the next morning, so we actually had to leave the concert early. Such a bummer! Another reason why I was annoyed by how long the opening act was and the long intermission time. I didn't estimate that the concert would last so long. Since the drive back was long, we needed to leave early in order to get home by 2:30 a.m.

After we left the concert, I took this picture in the bathroom mirror. Totally ghetto of me but I wanted to get a picture of what I wore to the concert.

Cheese!!